


Tell Me When You're Ready

by oneoneandone



Category: Women's Soccer RPF
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:13:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27112429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneoneandone/pseuds/oneoneandone
Summary: Even ten years from nowIf you haven't found somebodyI promise, I'll be aroundTell me when you're readyI'm waitin', I'm waitin'
Relationships: Kelley O'Hara/Hope Solo





	Tell Me When You're Ready

**Author's Note:**

> **Prompt**   
>  _Oh good, I'm glad someone else still has O'Solo feelings. I don't really have any specific idea, so whatever comes to you :) As long as it's fluffy (and your awesome writing) I know it'll be great!_

He’s born on a Sunday.

The last summer weekend before the fall, before the autumn chill takes the air.

And when Hope holds him for the first time, this much beloved little boy, she knows—this is exactly where she was always meant to be.

-*-

“You’re retiring.”

The call comes in the middle of the night, as unexpected as all of Hope’s most regretted ideas.

But she’d seen the email, the brief in anticipation of tomorrow—no, today’s—announcement, and she couldn’t keep herself from reaching out. From dialing the number she’d never quite been able to delete from her phone.

“You’re retiring,” Hope whispers again, this time barely loud enough to transmit across the miles, across the distances between them. Time and trauma and memories they’d both rather forget but can’t.

But can’t.

Kelley rolls over into her side, decades of courtesy too deeply ingrained to override the instinct soon, this strange lone hotel room in the last city where she’ll ever take the pitch.

“Hope.”

Maybe it’s an admonishment.

Maybe it’s a prayer.

Maybe it’s a memory and a gift and a curse, everything they were to each other once upon a time ago.

But then there’s a breath on the other end of the line, that soft, inevitable inhale, and Kelley’s voice softens.

“Hope—” she whispers, and the older woman can picture her so clearly, there in the orderly hotel room.

And it’s the hour, and the distance, and the sound of that little hitch in Kelley’s breath that fills in the doubts in her head and in her heart.

“Listen,” Hope says softly, “I’m going to be there. I’m coming—I’m packing a bag and flying out tonight.”

Her courage falters for one tiny nanosecond as she hears the silence on the other end, but Hope pushes through the walls her own heart has put up. “I’m going to be there. To see you play your last game. To hear you say the words.”

“I’m going to be there,” Hope promises again, this time to herself, already slipping on a pair of Keds over her bare feet, looking around the small master bedroom of the farmhouse she fought so hard to keep in the divorce.

And for just a moment, Hope pauses, realizing that aside from her name, Kelley hasn’t said a word.

“Kel—“ she starts to ask, but finds herself cut off by the softest promise she’s ever heard.

“I’ll find you,” Kelley whispers.

It’s enough for now.

-*-

His skin is milky-soft, fresh from his first bath, and his little feet press against the palm of her hands as she looks down at him, at the way his face changes in response to each new thing in his little world.

So new still that she counts his age in hours, minutes, marks it in her mind against the inevitability of forgetting all but the biggest moments of these early days.

“There we go, Danny,” Hope whispers as she guides his arms into the soft fleece of the onesie they’d packed in the go-bag more than a month ago. And it startles her, his wide eyes looking up at her, the way he already knows her, knows her voice.

This is her son, this beautiful, perfect boy. The spitting image of his mother, who Hope can hear breathing deeply—exhausted—in the bed on the other side of the room.

This–for the rest of her years–is her life.

-*-

It’s after the game, after the press conference, after dinner with all her family and friends and teammates–

–and Hope, the extra chair added on at the last minute, everyone shifting to make room at the table.

There had been laughter and tears. A slideshow of all her greatest moments, and plenty of her most embarrassing. Anecdotes from a few of her closest teammates, her very first coach.

Tributes to the end of an era.

For Kelley, the start of a brand new story.

It’s after everything, friends and family all retired to their rooms, their homes, and now they’re alone together in the hotel room overlooking a city she once called home.

Kelley comes out of the bathroom, having traded her dress and heels for bare feet, old sweats, and for a moment she just watches Hope watch the lights of they city as they flicker and dance below. And she wonders why–how–they’ve ended up here again. A dimly lit room, endings and beginnings well within reach, the weight of their memories both a burden and a blessing.

She’s older now. Older than she was the last time they meant the world to each other. Maybe wiser, though considering Hope is there at the wall of glass, turned now to look at her, it doesn’t seem likely.

Still, something seems so different now. As much as it feels the same.

“You changed,” Hope whispers, and she’s as much talking about the clothes as she isn’t.

Kelley nods and rubs a toe into the thick, soft carpeting of the bedroom. “This is more me anyway, comfort over class.” And Hope laughs, exactly as Kelley had expected her to.

And she wonders if Hope knows that these are her sweats, long forgotten in a drawer back at her Sky Blue apartment. If she can somehow tell that they’ve been tossed away and then retrieved in a panic time and time and time again.

Hope looks down at the bag she’d brought along to the game, to the presser, to the dinner after, not caring about the looks she got at every new location, by every new group of onlookers.

“Do you mind–I think I packed more than clothes for the game and the dress.” To be honest, though, she’s not certain. Can’t quite picture them in the fast, almost desperate way she’d shoved things into her carry-on, unwilling to waste any time on checking bags in or waiting for them to come off the plane after. Not when she’d be cutting it so close trying to get to the stadium, to the game.

To Kelley.

And the younger woman shakes her head, gesturing in the direction of the bathroom. “Go ahead, use anything you need.”

-*-

Kelley feels the warmth of another body behind her and smiles, but she doesn’t turn.

“You’re supposed to be in bed still,” Hope whispers into her shoulder, arms circling the younger woman’s waist, and presses a kiss to the curve of Kelley’s neck. But Kelley just leans back into her, letting Hope support her weight.

And they stand there for a moment, looking out at the way the waters light up as the sun inches higher, higher, in the sky.

“Remember the night I retired?” Kelley asks, hearing Hope’s soft answering hum, the two of them swaying in the early morning quiet. “I knew that night–we’d end up here.”

Hope’s hand comes up to rest under Kelley’s arm where it supports the delicate head of their son at her breast, and brushes her thumb over the little swirl of auburn curls there. “You did?” she asks, sounding surprised only because her own journey here, to this moment, has felt less like fate and more like a series of happy accidents, stumbling from one perfect moment to the next.

“Well,” she laughs, their son mewling at her breast, and tilts her head up to kiss at Hope’s jaw, “pretty close to here.”

-*-

It isn’t a fix, but it’s a start, Hope thinks as she strokes her fingers down Kelley’s spine, the younger woman sprawled out and sleeping on her belly in the large bed.

Kelley had taken her by surprise, holding out a hand as she’d come out from the bathroom. She had packed other clothes, some gym shorts, a hoodie. But it hadn’t mattered.

She hadn’t been worn them very long.

Kelley stirs under her touch and Hope pulls back her hand. “I didn’t mean to wake you,” she whispers in apology, but the younger woman shakes her head and whispers something into the pillow she’s buried her face against.

“—n’t,” Kelley turns her head and tries again. “You didn’t. It was just nice, you touching me.”

Her voice is sleepy, but awake, and Hope smiles, shifting back down to lay next to her, to share Kelley’s pillow. Her hand resuming its gentle touch, a little bolder now with Kelley’s permission, a little more deliberate.

She swallows hard and takes a moment to memorize every feature of Kelley’s face that she can see in the dark room. Banking it as insurance against the inevitability of losing her again.

“Everything I wasn’t ready for before,” Hope begins, swallows hard. “Everything I was too afraid to want with you, I’m not. Not any more.”

The words are soft, and there’s a quiver in her voice as she thinks: it might be too little.

It might be too late.

-*-

“Oh, Kelley,” her mother says, voice full of wonder and love as she looks down at the grandson sleeping in her arms.

He’s ten days old now, and after patiently waiting for the new family to get settled together, Kelley’s parents have flown in to meet their newest grandchild.

Daniel is wrapped in soft blankets to ward against the slightest hint of a chill in the air, and held tight in his grandmother’s arms, and still, Hope can feel her heart racing, her fingers curling anxiously as she struggles against the impulse to steal him back, her sweet, sleepy boy. And it’s not that she doesn’t trust Karen–Karen, who raised up three children of her own, including the one sitting carefully on the porch swing next to her mother and their son–not at all.

It’s just that every moment he’s not in her arms, every moment she’s not looking down at that perfect little face, she aches for what she’s missed and missing, what brand new thing he’s done that she hasn’t borne witness to.

“I know that look,” their son’s namesake says in an amused tone as he steps onto the porch and hands her a fresh coffee. And it throws Hope, it always does, to see Kelley’s familiar grin on the older man.

One day–she can already tell–she’ll see it again on her son.

“What look?” Hope takes the mug from Dan gratefully, sleep already hard to come by in these early days, and Kelley’s father laughs softly.

“The look of someone who’s only just realized that they carry the entire world in their hands.”

-*-

“Tell me,” Kelley whispers in the dark hotel room. “Tell me why you’re here.” 

It’s the middle of the night, summer hurrying on its way into fall, and far below them the nightlife of the city begins to turn toward tomorrow’s hustle, tomorrow’s dreams. And Hope can only sit there on the bed for another long, quiet breath, and gather herself, try to keep the walls she’d worked so hard to break down from rebuilding in this moment of vulnerability. 

This moment on the edge of everything. 

Kelley lays before her on the bed, on her side with her head resting on her arms, and her eyes watch Hope softly. 

This, Hope realizes, is the moment. It doesn’t matter that she ran, doesn’t matter that she fought against what she wanted, what she needed for so long. Because this is the chance she’s going to take, the fall she’s going to trust in. 

This woman, this hope, this love that’s lived alone inside her for far too long. 

“There’s a farmhouse,” she starts slowly, laying down next to Kelley in the bed, pressing their bodies together as she rests a hand–only just barely shaking–on the younger woman’s warm hip. “It’s mine now, just mine. And I keep seeing you there. Just out of the corner of my eye. Sitting on the porch with me as the sun comes up, spraying me with the hose while I’m trying to garden, walking up with the dogs after a run.”   
  
Hope breathes in softly as Kelley’s fingers play over her abs. “Inside, too. These little nooks and crannies where you fit in so well. The kitchen or the living room or the–” 

And she pauses for a moment before continuing. 

“Our bedroom. I see you all over, what we could be, what I hope I’m not too late for.” 

Softly, carefully, she presses a kiss over Kelley’s jaw. 

“All those things you believed we could have, it may have taken me a while to get here, Kel,” Hope feels the way the younger woman softens under her touch, yields to her, and it eases the anxious ache in her chest, “but I’m here, and I’m ready. This time, I’ll wait for–”

But the last words go unsaid. 

And it doesn’t matter. 

She has her answer. 

**Author's Note:**

> "When You're Ready," Shawn Mendes


End file.
